Okay. Good morning. It's Wednesday, January 22nd, and I will call a regular board of county commissioners meeting to order. Chris, will you do roll call please? Commissioner Holes. Here. Commissioner Chokot. Here. Commissioner Burrows. I'm here.
Jeff, will you do this today? I would like to leave this to the flag of the United States of America and to the public for which it stands one nation under
with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you, Jeff.
Public comment for those participating by a grant.
You may call 406-375-6513 in order to provide your public comment.
And the first item on our agenda is the review and
a possible approval of the HRC home program for the fourth quarter report.
report. Mr. Chairman, move to approve the quarterly report for the HRC home program as
presented. Second. It has been moved and seconded to approve the HRC home report as presented.
Is there any public comment on that motion? Is there any further discussion? Call for
the question, Greg. Right. Jeff. Aye. And I vote aye as well. And the next item on our
agenda is a public hearing to request the increase of recording feeds for the airport
lease for that start and that start for 10 o'clock and so we'll pause until then.
We will just reconvene right now to have a discussion and possible decision regarding the
increase for the Ravelli County airport leases.
for the record, subject
matter pardon me.
The legal ad was placed in the newspaper record in
print in January 8th of 25th and January 15th of 25th.
Mr. Chairman, move to approve resolution 4691,
increasing the recording fees at the airport for
report leases from $110 to $120 per lease.
Second.
Thank you, it's been moved and seconded to approve resolution 4691.
It's a recording fee increase for re-bally county airport leases from $110 to $120.
Is there any public comment on that motion?
Is there any further discussion?
Call for the question, Jeff.
Aye.
And Greg.
Aye.
and I vote aye as well. Thank you.
So now we can pause till 10 30. Okay.
Okay. Good morning
all. We will reconvene with public hearing on Septage Treatment and Composting
preliminary engineering report for the Morrison and Knight Marley. Welcome. We are
also on Zoom right now. So we've got people online. Just doing my check. We've got
some online, like John, can you hear us? Palacio or
Lynn?
Those folks online, can you hear us?
I think it's because we're not weak.
I can hear you, Brian. Oh, there's Mike. Okay, I turn
the volume up. All right, I think I can hear you. All right. Good. All right, very good.
Can you guys hear me? Okay, Cooper. Yes, we can. Thank you, Cooper.
awesome.
Welcome.
Just a quick
thing if you haven't the red. That's
on the red zone. Please do sign in if
you haven't signed in and then if we
can just capture those that are
online as well for attendance. I'll
be appreciated. You can assure my
screen.
So we're here today for the
Rivalda County Septus Treatment and
Compost Facility Plumar Engineers
Report. This is public meeting number
one. And I'm sharing my screen now so hopefully everybody can see that. If you need to kind of
scoot your own, most of the stuff we're going to do is going to be based around this. It's a
public link so it can be shared out. I can grab everybody's sign-in stuff and distribute this to you
as well or give you a PDF of the printout. The PDF of the printout, just the program we're using,
it's a little bit fragment to be honest with it. The images and reference stuff isn't quite as good.
as re's online version. So if you're able to navigate the web link and use that it's probably a
little bit better data source.
So, um, introduction quick. I'm Aaron McCollock with Morse Merle. I'm
the project manager for this project. Cooper Lynn is also joining online. He's been helping
doing a lot of the narrative writing, population analysis and then we'll continue on doing a lot of the
work for the alternative analysis in support of Ben Watson and then Rico Lashley that will
really step into the next phases.
So, I'm going to go through real quick background, how we got here.
The county was awarded some planning grant funds to look at, septage holistically in
the county, historically there's been issues noted really over the last decade but I think
reality is this has been in people's minds from for more than that the current
situation for Valley County is the majority of septage from septic tank
pumping is land applied in a couple of spots and it's led to some new
senses some health concerns the other outlets been Mozilla County that was
restricted recently due to some maintenance projects and long-term they've
expressed interest to really restrict that moving forward.
So public hearing number one, there are going to be three public hearings total for this
project.
Public hearing number one is really to discuss the planning process and then the background
data and establish the community's concepts and needs for a project.
Public meeting number two would be exploring alternatives for treatment and public meeting
number three is taking input from the public along with those alternatives, providing
a ranking system and selecting a recommended path move for it in a project.
So just kind of a quick recap of what the preliminary engineering process is.
It assesses current situation.
So we're looking at the planning area, which is the county, we'll get into that a little
bit more.
The current and existing facilities and systems that are used by county residents, performance
of existing systems, and the capacity of those systems moving ahead.
We also assess the future situation, so we do population projections, look at how many
septic systems could be reliant on septic pumping in Rivali County in the future, establish
a planning period, and then as I noted, we look at development of alternatives and evaluation
models of alternatives.
That's the next step after this meeting.
We'll be doing that for the next couple of months, and then development implementation plan,
which is really March and April of this year.
The PER preliminary engineering process is useful for a couple of different things.
One is established as a holistic look at what the issues are, provides public opportunity
to comment on those items that are perceived as issues or bring up other issues that may
be present, reviews action items, no action items, for improvement alternatives.
It also establishes an implementation strategy.
It develops operation of maintenance criteria that can be used moving forward with any projects
that come out of this, and it's also useful for state federal funding applications for
grants and low interest loans.
As we go through the remainder of this, if anybody has questions, feel free to just step forward
and ask as we're going, if not, we'll definitely ask questions at the end and can scroll back.
So if something catches your mind you want to talk about it as we're going through feel free to interrupt and interject and we'll try to address it as we're going. If not, we'll address anything at the end.
If anybody does want to ask a question, please come to the microphone at the podium and we'll recognize you and we can go forward. Thank you.
Thank you.
So real quick, I'll start off here and then Logan or excuse me Cooper's going to kind of take over here in a second, but the first thing that we want to establish is planning area.
currently planning area would encompass all of our Valley County minus the municipal or publicly served
sewer areas. So we've got Darby Hamilton, Corvallis, Victor and Steven'sville. I'll have public
wastewater treatment systems with discharge permits. The remainder of the county is rural and is served
by their community or individual septic systems.
So currently there's approximately 13,328 septic systems
known.
More recent trends are about 3,000 these have been added
since 2000.
Those are the systems with probably better records.
Population of Revali County is dispersed between,
like I said, county and then municipal slash public served.
It approximately a 4-to-1 ratio of the current population in the county.
The largest municipal system is Hamilton with about 5,400 people, and then, well, real quick,
I guess just, as a county as a whole, just social economics right now, once we get into
more refined areas where improvements may be warranted, we will revise the social economics
much more of neighborhoods, but as a county, 28% of the county is considered low to moderate
income with a per capita income of approximately 38,500. So Cooper, if you want to kind of take
over now and talk about the two different ways we looked at population and the overall trends.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Aaron. Can you guys still hear me? Okay.
Yes. We can. Awesome. Yeah. Feel free to, like Aaron mentioned before, feel free to hop in,
and ask any questions, and we'll do our best to respond.
So yeah, here on the left,
we can see the population in Ravalli County,
shooting all the way back to the late 1960s,
and some notable periods are the clear accelerated growth
rates that we see in both the 1990s
and the gate, again later on in the latter half of the 2010s.
But looking at the current state of the county,
we see a population of just under 50,000 people,
And we estimated that about 20% of that number to be living within the major municipal
sewer districts that Aaron just mentioned before, like Stevensville, Hamilton, Darby,
all those places.
Yeah, so furthermore, when looking at future projections, we're going to be looking at
like a larger scale on the scale of like decades moving forward and also on a smaller scale
that will discuss a little bit.
But yeah, we've decided on a few options for population growth with low average and rapid
growth variations all being viable.
We can see that there on the right, that 0.92% for the low growth, the 1.9% for the average,
and the 3.6% for the rapid growth, in which much slide down for me there, Aaron.
Yeah, so I mentioned before that we'll look at a kind of a more narrow scale.
So, when we narrow down to the last 15 years or so, starting around 2010, we get a better
look at the more recent trends in population growth in Ravalli County.
During this time, we've seen quite a variety in average yearly growth from as low as 0.1%
there in 2014.
You can see on the chart on the left, climbing to just under 2% at the crest of the decade
at 2020.
Similar to before, we have delineated a couple growth projections using low average and
rapid growth possibilities as shown here on the right of that 0.1%, 95% and that rapid
growth of 1.72%. But overall growth in the most recent decade is historically been a
bit low compared to what we've seen as we shoot back to the 1960s up to the end of the
millennia at around 2000. There could be a number of possibilities for this but a notable
stagnation of growth following the 2008 recession corresponding housing bubble likely contributed to that being low around that period pretty heavily compared to other things.
But when we look past that anomaly the latter half of the decade from, you know, 2014, 2015 to 2020 seems to be a bit more in line with historical averages.
as we look at future projections, we can take what we've learned and start projecting out.
As mentioned before, the 2010s pretty closely reflect that recurring pattern that we see
in the past of booming economic growth followed by corresponding housing slump.
So we have decided that we need to look at a longer time scale to more accurately predict
long-term growth. Other variables such as legislative actions, notably relating to water rights,
likely have a significant impact on rural growth in particular as they seem to affect them
more than folks within the municipal sewer districts. And this will tend to drive population growth
and sewer communities.
As opposed to those outside, the pre-described boundaries. And you can see on the chart here, we have some rapid average and slow growth projections pushed out for the next 20 years or so. Just to add there, what is standard used in engineering planning documents is a 20 year planning period. Provides realistic growth, you can kind of put brackets around economic trends, industrial trends or growth trends
that are realistic. Going out beyond that 20-year period, you get into quite a bit of uncertainty,
so really what we're proposing to use is just a 20-year planning period for this project as well.
We'll look at potential and scalability of any solutions beyond that, but really the immediate
improvements that could come out of this are looking at deficiencies in the existing systems are
are going to be bracketed within that current situation
to the 20 years out.
So we went through just kind of bracketed every five years
to show what it looks like and what we're proposing
is using the average of that 50 year period, which
is the 1.91%.
And you can see where we're going from the 48,300 currently
to just shy of 72,000 by the year 2045.
It's pretty important to kind of come to consensus on this, that this makes sense to
the community.
It's not a rigid, this is what's going to happen, but we really, really do want to make
sure that we're providing realistic solutions.
And this,
it evens out the housing boom that Western Montana has seen for the last 50 years,
is what we're going with.
It's not going to catch the rapid growth that we might have seen in the last two years,
but it's going to take into account, you know, the recessions that might come, periods of 4% growth when we're followed by periods of half percent or last growth for two to three years.
I think questions on that are...
I'm Roger DeHon.
Was there any attempt to separate the growth between sewered areas and unsurred areas?
It seems like just, you know, from my personal observation, it seems like there's been many more subdivisions lately that have been trying to get into the towns rather than out in the county.
It is something we have not dove into that great detail yet. It is something we chatted about.
And I think it's worse. It warrants a spot check to make sure that is consistent on some other communities.
I think we've seen similar for sewer communities in the past that one and a half to two percent
growth in Raleigh County hasn't been drastically different.
The things that are really out there that are hard to predict that will impact the future
is over the last couple of legislative cycles, there has been a constant pressure on getting
a better handle under the exempt water rights and the water rights as a whole for rural communities.
and what that could do for either a lot of size restrictions, what are its
process, or just pushing more affordable development to municipal boundaries.
It's hard to get our hands around honestly, not knowing what the legislature
really going to do, there's some draft legislatures out there that we've talked
about and reviewed, but we chose not to, I guess, skew history with those
future pending pending things at this time. There was warrants in the noting.
What is clear is what is clear is we're going to see a shift from rural development more
towards those municipalities because that I mean it it's a fact that you are deep that exempt
water right you decrease your ability to do large scale subdivisions in the county so you're not
going to see an 80 or 100 lot subdivision the way it stands now. So I think that number
is fine. You probably will see maybe not historically, but I think you will see that growth
rate in the county decrease a little bit and the municipalities increase. So I think
1.9 using averages. I think it's a conservative estimate. If anything, I think it gives us a
a little bit of, it may even be a little bit high using that average growth, I think, but.
Well, the other thing that's hard to predict is that legislative slash sessions over the next 20 years,
every two years we're going to be facing that.
Not even the legislature is ultimately a judge.
If it's kind of decided, there you go, too, not necessarily a legislature can do what they want,
but it's the judges that are overturned and making these decisions that are affecting us.
Yes, yeah, Jim Rommel, I just want to go back.
Florence doesn't have a, well that's one of the largest communities in the county,
isn't it?
Isn't it bigger than Corvallis, so they don't, they don't, they don't have a
source system.
They voted against it.
Yeah, they voted against it.
What's the data source for these population numbers and the trends?
Is that, are we in census data?
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's, no, it's census data from, sorry, I've got it noted, I've got to put note
it in the chapter. It's through the funding agencies recommend using a link through the
Department of Commerce. So it's, it's US housing data, census data. It's not septic. On this
next slide, there's a kind of a gut check. And I think that's something we need to explore
or a little bit more John on the number of septic permits
historically and where that fits in.
But yeah, it's not under housing permits
or septic permits in our valley county.
It's based on population.
I mean, at least anecdotally,
I think we are exceed what the census data has out there.
You know, the cost of proving that up is really
with that.
I think that the census occurred during COVID
and they didn't do canvassing as they normally do.
and so we're
relatively sure that our numbers are low.
And then, you know, when we looked at incrementally,
every two years there's the data sets
and that was cut off in 2020.
So it missed the COVID spike at the end of this
where I think the county had over 500 septic permits
in one year that far exceeded
I think what the average has been.
So I think if you shifted this 10 year increment
that we looked at that showed the average growth
less than the average oath over the 50-year period, you're probably closer to
average because it's going to take the last couple years of the housing recession
plus than the COVID spike where everybody was moving out of metropolitan areas
to more rural communities, rural settings, I think that's prevalent everywhere in
the West, honestly, saw that. Probably under sampling, it wasn't captured adequately.
But
even with that, you're still hitting that average, which does show that
So the next thing here is just looking at growth forecasts and then here's where we're starting
to look more at what the impacts are to septage, we're taking growth in a population and
figuring out how many septic systems there would be, so like I said, we took the municipal
possibly serve population centers out of the 49-ish thousand, and we'll end up with
about 37-300 people on septic systems in Ravelli County with the current number
of septic systems of 13-thousand three hundred and so that puts the average per
capita is about 2.8 persons per septic system. Might be a little bit high compared
to housing statistics. We didn't filter out the number of commercial systems that are in there,
and then the other thing that might skew that a little bit is on community septic systems where
there's multiple housing units attached to one septic permit. If that's being counted as one septic
system, it's going to skew. So there's going to be some community subdivisions that you might have 20 or
30 homes on one permit, but as a whole, it kind of gets filtered out. I don't think it's enough to
really dive in and change this number, but the 2.8 person's perceptic system is essentially
how we got from 13,000 septic systems currently to at the end of the planning period, just
shy of 20,000 septic systems.
And then as a spot check.
Well, the question on that, though, the 13,328 is the number of permits on file at environmental
health?
Yes.
So we have a lot of houses pre-permitting that are out there that the don't how are you taking it that it because I mean that started in
1980-ish anything before that's grandfather then doesn't have a septic permits sitting there who knows I mean that could be plus or minus
We have a lot of houses that were built pre-80
That I think that number could be significantly short of what we have
I mean, I would say to the tuna, I don't know, I don't know, I don't think double would be it, but I would say to the tuna 25%.
Let me significant.
I'll circle back on that and you know these numbers will definitely be updated.
I'll double check, we got the number from John and I'll double check with him.
The other thing that we were talked about doing is this GIS exercise filtering out the municipal boundaries
And then pull on the tax data for all the every single dwelling within Rebelli County or every single parcel
It has a taxable dwelling on it as a resident and then pulling that to spot check if the 13,000 or 14,000 is accurate
So 10 Miller has a GIS has a GIS has they'll be able to give you a pinpoint of every
Res I think yeah, I think our GIS guy already extracted
I just don't know if he went through the exercise of pulling that number up but
I would assume septic systems include holding tanks as well.
It should be, as a cesspool or pre-drainfield, the other thing that I think the tax numbers
might give a better representation of community systems.
If the pinned is one septic system, if there's 20 dwellings on that cesspool system,
it's
The number of people that are not on a municipal sewer system.
What happens when you back out the average.
So what are you assuming third like 37,000?
What's your typical average per household is a close to 2.2?
2.8 per per septic system right now.
That's in a valid camera, but you said that's high.
Historically, it's usually around 2.25 to 2.5.
It really depends on neighborhoods and communities.
So it's, it's a little high.
it's saying that there's more people per house here.
And see, that probably, if you just use that average
into that, it's going to bring it down.
It's going to bring it down.
It's going to bring it down closer to 17,000 septic systems
in Ravalli County, verse 13, 328, which is probably,
like an, I would think, is a closer number to what we probably
realistically have.
It actually is 16, 888.
If you use that average, average household number of 2.25.
So that that and that that's a pretty significant difference 17,000 versus 13,000 so for sure that's probably that's a number
I don't think the census data in the populations were trying to true up the number of systems is definitely
true enough because that's pretty significant.
It's just a point of detail, sir.
You included holding tanks, the septic systems, it shouldn't they be separate in some form
because they get pumped at a different frequency than a septic system would normally get pumped.
How that would affect that number, that's why I brought it up.
It affects the total amount of septage pumps, so it would be a difference if there's a large
value that could skew it.
potentially I guess our pumpers could tell us that of helmet you know the
some of the holding tanks may may get used on a weekend they may not pump it
very often I don't know the concentration you're
talking about the B.O.D.M.
that's yes it's gonna be a different car not accurate if I may yeah this can be a
lot different say if you're a holding tank it a facility that can link us
use once a year and you also get pumped every five or six years that
concentration is gonna be more than the one that gets pumped every two or three
weeks. It's going to be a large difference. The holding tanks less actually, right, because
you've got a little water in there. Yeah, if they're being pumped more frequently, yeah,
there's going to be a lot less. The state that number is blended though into the septic tank
numbers isn't on the hoarding, so there's no way to divvy that out. It's really hard. I know
when I've been taking care of right now, they're waiting for the drain to permit. Yeah. So that's,
I don't know how assisted is the holding tank or the system. They're just waiting on permitting for
the drain fuel. So there's that stuff going on too.
I guess the way the the pumpers after report to the state, there's this four classifications,
there's saptage, there's pit vaults, there's grease traps and sums. So I think holding tanks
probably get lumped into the saptage volume on reporting basis. So I don't know. Other than
anecdotally, I don't know if there's a really a good way of parsing that out from the
pumpers, it would probably be coming back to the county if there's any permit, the
out a difference between the two to account.
Where this kind of goes in is a gut shack in there.
All right, seem fairly reasonable. So taking, sorry, one more thing real quick on those septic systems. And I don't know what, how many vault toilets we have here between all the parks and FWP. Does that septic systems include vault or we break that out separately? It's separate. It is. Yeah. Okay. But you had you do have those numbers. Oh, they're, they're different out separately. Okay. They might not be fully,
in this presentation, because they were pretty minor, but on our full data set has those
parsed out.
That's what I did know is whether they were pretty small things.
You know, there's only a couple of pumpers that do a lot of that, but it's pretty incidental
in the grand scheme of the total gallons.
And the vault includes portapodils and pitfalls, yep.
So this number is going to be based on the starting point of the 13-8.
It's going to be changed a little bit.
It sounds like which is going to change as 2.8 persons.
It's going to change the trend a little bit.
The numbers are going to be a little bit different.
But as a spot check, we are projecting ahead the total number of septic systems in 2045
by the current background data that we've got and we're using.
It was just side of 20,000.
And if you look at that over a 20-year average,
just that's 310 new septic systems per year. Kind of just a quick gut checks. I think I had
and we need to get this number from the health department to be exact for every year but
kind of through highs and lows. 2014 I think was 175
-ish permits. There was one period where they had
had
300 and then in 2021, there was 575 new permits issued.
Yes, 131, 309 in 2017 and 2021, there was 575.
So, let's check that out anecdotally.
But it feels, I mean, we're within the realm of, I think,
where we want to be.
It's picking up eyes and lows and that average is around 310.
It might go up to 325 to 350, based on increasing the number
of septic residential units that are on septic systems.
Then kind of going into septic flows,
so septic tank pumpers has a little bit of background information
and then Cooper's going to jump in here in a second too.
So septic flows, septic pumpers are required
to report all pumpings to the state
through the Department of Environmental Equality, Solid Waste.
This is done semi-annually, so twice a year,
they provide a report to the state.
We've got that for the license operators within the county and land application sites within the county.
Operators are allowed to either take a septage to waste water treatment plants that will accept it.
Septage processing and composting facilities.
There's none in the western Montana that are available, landfill or land application sites.
in Ravalli County land application sites and the Mizzoula wastewater treatment facility are really the only ones that have been used.
So we've got data from the last five years. That's really what this next section is based on.
Come on, Cooper, were you going to go through this part or was I going to go through the data here and you were going to jump into the next part?
I can just keep going here.
So like I said, it's either taken to the Mizzoula resource recovery facility and then there are four permitted sites within Ravalli County.
only three of those land application sites are actually listed as active.
The Hendrickson property has been inactive since 2022.
Excuse me, 2020, and prior to that, it didn't accept septage waste.
It only was some pump disposal.
And that was in the Florence area as where that was at.
So, this graph represents the different properties that are out there.
zoom in a little bit.
The Schultz property,
Vueglie property, and then the Frost property, there was two sites there. One was
created inactive recently, but the remainder of the property is still active and
that's in the Hamiltonites area. And then like I said, the Henderson property,
Henderson property is listed as inactive. So cumulative, this top line is the, the
some of all land app sites that were used in Ravalli County.
You know, so we're 650,000 up to a peak of
almost 2.4 million gallons in 2021.
Kind of started to dip a little bit.
And then 2023 and 2024.
I think if you overlay Missoula's
resource recovery facilities restrictions
that explains kind of why that trend jumped back up
to more land app sites being used in Ravalli County.
What happened in 2014 for that to go back down was that Missoula allowing a little bit more to accommodate?
Yeah, their maintenance project got wrapped up and there's just peaks and valleys.
I think the pumpers probably have more context of this.
Some is economic.
You know, when people have money and feel it's appropriate.
It's not a rush.
I mean, the emergency pumping always happens, but a lot of the other ones I think there's probably some transit that follow with when people have money in the pockets.
Right, I know a big one we've noticed is houses for sale, you know, for inspections
has dropped drastically.
That's been one of our biggest so the housing has slowed way down that way.
And the Missoula hasn't taken any more, they're still the same numbers they have in
across a couple years.
Does
the site at the frost ranch temporarily due to the season, or is it out of service
burnout?
No, so you can see where it drops down after 2021.
That's where part of the site went to inactive, and then the remainder that's there is the current
active site.
I have one two quick points I'm trying to make sure everybody is aware of it for information.
Are all of the pumpers that have businesses in the county do they have access to I mean I think I know the answer to this but I want to make sure everybody heads on the same page are all the pumpers do they have access to these to these to these land app sites.
And secondly and secondly is it possible that Missoula because of they have a failure of some sort or just because politically they decide to cut off.
other than Missoula County to use their facilities.
Could they just all of a sudden, with very short notice,
cut off pumpers from taking loads there,
and that be a very serious monkey wrench in the situation.
So the answer to the question, I guess, in two parts.
These sites are all privately held sites.
It's up to the property owner and the pumpers
to either work out an agreement.
There's an environmental assessment that goes through
when the sites are originally permitted.
So they are private, the permission to have the right to them is all held by the property owner and who they authorize to use them.
There's permission slips that the pumpers have to provide to DEQ.
So they are privately held.
Regarding Missoula resource recovery facility, there's some more data coming up on that but yes.
So the city of Missoula, it's operated for the benefit of the city of Missoula residents and taxpayers.
There are no obligations that they provide any treatment for residents outside of the city of Missoula.
They are, it's not affirmed, but there is discussions whether they also would restrict access to their treatment facility to Missoula County residents.
because it's not. It's not to the death. Have we reached out? I mean one thing that we may want
to do through this process is reach out to the land app holders because essentially what we're
doing is we're now competing with them. If they're utilizing that for an income, a revenue source that
we're now, you know, we could get in a situation where maybe they're willing to drop their price
some to compete for the pumpers business and so then we've got this government
private competition going on for septage disposal so it seems to me like
sooner than later we should reach out to I'm in this especially frost which
looks like they're taking most of it and just say how does this impact you how can
we work together to do this because I see that being a major hurdle through
this whole thing is this almost two million gallon average it's going on
land app sites if we don't get that two million dollars coming into a
disposal system that we've got going on that kind of shoots a hole in this
hole so if we drop the land the land app owners and they say no we we want to
continue this and this is a significant revenue source for our family being able
to keep this property, it's kind of a different dynamic
to this whole discussion then.
Versus that they're like, now we've kind of been wanting
to get out of the business anyway.
And that'd be a great thing for the county.
So I think that would pretty well
been a discussion to have through this process.
And would we also find out if they have a capacity
for the accommodate of growth that we're talking about?
I think all those things are a question we should have, but two million gallons go to land
up sites as fundamental to this whole thing work and how that dynamic plays out between
the new septage facility and land up sites.
Yeah, totally.
We have not reached out to him yet.
I think that's a meaningful thing to do is what their perspective is.
The paragraph is a bunch of words here, but I think probably the important things to kind of
the key in on is 2022, so kind of, you know, this 1.5 million here,
it appears that
about, it's difficult, the city has parsed out Missoula County and out of County
Septage at the receiving station. They didn't separate it from Ravalli County to Lake County
to Sanders County or Superior. So it's kind of hard to parse that out but going
through what the pumpers operate here where they reported their
septage from versus what Mizzula did for the overlapping data that we have. It
appears that about 66% out of county septage that was going to the Mizzula
Treatment Facility was originating from our Valley County. So that comes up to
approximately 1.9 million in 2022 that dropped in 2024 to about 950,000 so about a
million gallons less went from Ravalli County to Missoula in 2024 from what
it had been historically and it totally sounds about right what was about half
of what it was.
So is that the total we estimate then is that sound reasonable that
We're at three and a half million gallons generated and then there's no other
Disposals because I heard at one point we were going to Helena maybe. I don't
know if that's just way minor in the whole scheme of things. There is some
Discharges and there's two pumpers that have taken to Helena and a great
Falls. The great Falls ones is pretty incidental. The Helena one has a little bit
impact it's it's not huge and the issue with that is that pumper also operates in other counties so
there isn't a county of origin in the the state's data sets so it's hard to parse if it came
from a valley county and then went to Helena or if it originated somewhere between and that pumper
just has it on that report.
But it's clear that there's a million or so more gallons than we're
We're showing on the land application sites consistently.
He was up to $2 million, and it's been restricted, yes.
Okay.
Jim Rommel, again, Mr. Rosa, I'm sorry, I got to ask you a question here.
Are you suggesting that if the frost object to getting money from septic trucks driving up
their driveway on their back 40 that we stopped this whole project.
If that's what you heard, I don't think that's what I said.
Okay, I want to clarify that.
What I said was we have two million gallons of septage going to the cross property.
Correct.
Unless we create an ordinance or complete prohibition.
There you go.
This is going to work.
That's exactly where I want to go.
want you to go. Thank you very much because yeah that's going to have to happen. I mean if we say
if we say you know if I'm a septic pumper and I got to pay $10 a gallon at the sewer plant
and $2 a gallon of frost property where am I going? Okay that is that question has got to be
solved now or our meeting is worthless. Well I think that's what I said about five minutes ago.
That's exactly the point that I just made is that if we don't figure out the
impacts of the land-app sites on this whole process, we may as well end it, because if two
million gallons are still going to the land-app sites,
There's no way that this plan is going to pencil out. And so then you get further down the road, which is, do we, do we want to, first, do we want to, and two, do we have the authority to restrict land app sites, or is it a permitted process under state law, whether, whether we object to it or not, they get a land app site. So there's a lot of dynamics to the land app site that need figured out through this process.
Thank you for clarifying that.
And Jeff, the other wrinkle that we got, I consider.
Roger, can you go to the microphone?
Sorry, it's picked up, please.
Thank you.
Roger DeHon, the other little wrinkle we got to consider
is that Ravelli County is not the only county around.
If people are already willing to drive to Helena,
there's a lot of empty land between here and Helena.
I think we heard that from a pump or this set of,
we had to have a land upside.
I think, can Missoula County?
So that is another dynamic.
Yeah, Browns has went in with it. I think that there's some more to come on now. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. So it, you know,
Ravalli County can make an ordinance, you know, no land app in Ravalli County. That doesn't stop somebody from
finding a place in adjacent county.
Well, do we want to regulate somebody out of business on a legal business?
Thank you, Roger.
So I think I jumped the gun. I think Cooper's going to jump in here and kind of talk about
subject tank maintenance and composition for a quick second, and then we'll get back to
really the land requirements and where we currently sit on inventory.
Awesome. Thank you, Ryan, and thank you everyone. Yeah, again, feel free to step in as
any questions rise. Yeah, so support the department of environmental quality here in Montana,
as well as the EPA on the federal level, both recommend consistent pumping of subject tanks.
And as often as two years, up to a maximum interval of around six years.
When modernizing these septic systems, it's important to include several pertinences,
like baffle walls, to direct flow, ensure proper solid grease and liquid separation, as
well as encourage settling of solids and slowing down the process of clogging.
Additionally, modern tanks often utilize effluent filters to trap small suspended solids
that may not have settled out earlier in the process.
This extends the lifespan of the system
and helps prevent blockages in the drain field,
which may call for expensive repairs
and replacements down the line.
But in terms of sizing, residential subject tanks,
it varies depending on the amount of bedrooms
and the dwellings from two up to seven,
but they size from about a minimum of 1,000 gallons
and upwards of 2,000 gallons
depending on the size of the home, and non-residential tanks are also sized at that minimum 1,000 gallons,
but they have an additional requirement of needing a two and a half days of retention time.
You can slide down here.
Yeah, but here on the left, we see an example of one of these modernized septic tanks that I discussed before.
It has a baffle and an effluent filter, as mentioned beforehand.
And in regards to a specific composition of the septage in a tank, we see mostly three
components.
The first of is sludge, which accumulates on the bottom of the tank, and accounts for
roughly one-fifth to one-half of total volume of the tank.
And above that, we have scum, which typically consists of fat-soil's creases that accumulates
on the top of the rest of the effluent liquids.
It's combined.
These components make the total product of septage, which
is largely considered low volume, high-strength ways
due to its high concentrations of beauty,
nutrients, and solids seen as here on the table
on the right.
We've got about 5,000 milligrams per liter of BOD,
around 250 total phosphorus, about 670 total nitrogen,
other nutrients, and then a total solids concentration
of about 28,000. I'm assuming that's supposed to be milligrams per liter there. But yeah, on the
separate side, and then on the influence side, see about 230 milligrams per liter of BOD. And then,
you know, much slower nutrient values of 6 and 44 milligrams per liter, respectively, in about 400
milligrams per liter of total solids.
So, every wastewater treatment facility is going to have a little bit different
or influence. Influent is raw waste water coming into a treatment plant. So you can just see
the disparity between regular composition influence into this data from a Western Montana facility
that has a separate receiving facility. So it is analytical data from the early 2000s.
You can see the difference there. BOD is substantially higher. Most of the permits are written around
TSS, or nitrogen removal, and you can see obviously that septic has far more nutrients
via phosphorus and nitrogen than normal plant influence.
Yeah, a lot less diluted during that process.
So this number is based on the population and the septic, so it's going to be a little
bit different based on what we just talked about with the total number of septic systems.
But right now we're estimating approximately 2.8 million gallons of
septage comes in, that's approximately 210 gallons per year, per septic system.
So it goes to that average pumping sequence of, you know, every five years,
four, four and a half, five years, maybe six years is kind of enough.
It might feel a little bit more frequent than most people do it, quite
honestly, I know the guidance is three to five years, but I doubt many people
follow that trend, honestly.
Where that goes out to, though, population projections
is at the end of 20 years, we're up to almost 4.2 million gallons of
septage generated from within Ravalli County per year.
We're going to kind of
switch gears now to talk about the existing facilities that are used for
accepting and treating septage except
there's six licensed septic operators
list to rally county as service areas they're listed here there's your licenses
they're required to do their license in the canylie to report it through the
state we're gonna dive real quick into land application requirements first and
then we'll talk about the waste bar treatment plan as well so land
applications within Montana are governed by Montana DQ, ARM 17-50.809. There is also a
component of that that goes to the, help the governing health board for the county, but the
review the environmental assessment are prepared by the state of Montana.
There are sites that
They need to be 500 feet away from any inhibited buildings.
Pumpings can't be applied within 150 feet of any surface waters or infirm.
Ephemeral or intermittent drainages and wetlands.
Pumpings cannot be applied within 100 feet of any roadways that are public.
So that's state federal county or city maintained roadways.
Pumpings cannot be applied within 100 feet of any drinking water supplies.
So mostly wells.
and then they need to be on slopes less than 6%. I think that gets reduced to
3% on frozen ground.
And then seasonal groundwater separation is a 6 foot
minimum.
So site maintenance, there's maintenance requirements that anybody
using land app sites has to follow. Basically any litter that isn't screened out
needs to be picked up within eight, six hours of application. Pumpings have to be
You apply it at agronomical annual application rates, so depending on either the crop or
range land, there's a nitrogen uptake that's used to determine how many gallons of
septage per year are allowed to be put on there.
You can't over apply and start to carry those nutrients in the soil.
You need to show that you're consuming them.
I don't think there's any analytical soil tests that are showing that you're doing that.
It's just you need to show the paper that you're doing that.
Pumpings can't be applied on frozen or snow cover ground that may enter the state water.
There are some provisions to apply on frozen ground if it's less than 3% and there's a
couple other special requirements for that.
The other one that's critically that needs to be implemented is any vector attraction, path
So vectors or insects, rodents, things that can carry disease or illness from an animal
to a human or considered vector.
So insects,
or like I said, it's in the internet connection, so I think I think so working
on them.
There's multiple ways to do that.
They can be incorporated in the ground within six hours or they can be localized, stabilized
to increase the pH higher than 12 for 30 minutes.
and then there's land used restrictions such as grazing, contact to human health protections, crop.
I mean there's just a gamut of what the ended use is.
That runs from everything from 30 days for public access to up to 38 months.
If there's a crop that would include edible parts for harvest below ground.
So carrots, potatoes, beets, anything that would potentially be an edible crop
is you can't use the land for that for 38 months.
We could back up about one paragraph.
You were talking about testing that was required in these land app places for, I think
it was probably nitrates that had to be done, that have to be done by the user, and in Revali
county. I'll use one spot in particular. Jim Rommel, you might be sensitive to this because
it's close to you, I think. And that is the one that's up Hamilton Heights Road. Is that
being, is there statistical data to prove that that's being done there?
So I hope I didn't miss that speak. I was trying to say there is no, to my knowledge, there
is no requirement to sample the soil to check nitrates beginning and to make sure it's
being uptaken. There's requirements to do the calculations to show that the vegetation
or the crop that's being used on that property is going to take up those nutrients and
nitrogen. But I don't believe how do we know?
So the state, through their assembly and reporting, they check the application rates versus the
agronomical uptaking. But it's just a paper exercised to my understanding.
When we see an area being, you know, just visually see that people can be nervous about,
wow, the frequency of use is like extraordinary.
In their minds, is it in fact being used with a higher frequency than maybe, you know,
in other words, who keeps a check on and how do we know if the frequency of use by trucks dumping
on a certain number of acres is in fact over the top or within the prescribed limit.
The way the environmental assessment and the permit is written would be gallons per
acre across the site and then there's reporting of gallons that are applied to that site.
I am unaware of the state is taking it to, you know, if you've got a hundred acres and
and you're allowed to meet gallons across that site.
If they're just checking that your applications are right
and assuming you're dispersing it across the entire area,
or if you're over-applying in one corner,
because it's easier to get to.
I don't know that anybody is routinely checking that,
and although there are two inspections,
I believe, per year, per site,
that should be looking at that,
looking at full replication, misuse of the site.
There are revocation processes that
Depremence and licenses can be revoked or reviewed if any of the pumpers have more data on that than I do
I think that's my understanding of the process those
There's different ways to do it you the vector reduction has to happen
And that's either raising the pH through adding a line to crease that windy or it ain't incorporating the soil
Okay, there's two different ways so there's two different ways to do it. Yep
So, here's a map that we have that shows the application sites within Ravalli County
and then it also lists the city.
So, where's the bitter national forest in there?
Okay.
Jump up your rope, I can't.
We should probably overlay on there.
This map.
Sorry.
There may be this map.
so the the planning area map here highlights so a little bit difficult to see
you can kind of make out the yellow orange line that's the county boundary
the gray hatched area or shaded area is all public lands whether it's
state or federal forests and grasslands and then yeah the white areas are
privately held. I think you just go back and open a slow figure I'm
gonna go through
the land upsides first since we've been talking about that more and then we'll
jump back to the municipal system. So I'm going to start down here. Shell's property
located down by Connor. It's a fairly small area. Most recently there's about 4.5, 4.6 acres.
it's been used actively ranges from 300
We've got 130,000 gallons per year, 400,000 gallons per year. We've got pretty consistent.
Let me just make sure I'm missing anything on that one.
It's been pretty consistently used.
And then the next one currently is really the frost property. This is one of the couple of people mentioned. It's currently approximately 107 acres of historic use. It appears to be reduced to approximately 35 acres.
since 2010, and then 2022, the average is 1.3 million gallons, 2023, 1.5 million gallons.
Like I noted,
this site accepts pit vault waste, pit vault waste, and 2021 appears to have
been limited or reduced. Historically, it had accepted up to 125,000 gallons of pit vault
waste and a little bit of grease waste as well. Usually, you know, 70,000 ish was the highest
of grease waste that was applied to this site. It appears to be the only site in Ravalli County
that is accepting grease interceptors and routinely accepting pit vault waste as well.
The utility property,
this is the most recent one that's permitted in the county, so we've got more data on here.
environmental assessment went through a couple of processes. Went from over a hundred acres of
permitted down to 72 throughout that process basically. Most recent activity appears that it's
approximately using 14 acres of the site's been used. It was used in 2019 and then operation of
it was ceased for a couple of years. It was started to be used again in 2022 and 2023.
three. It's been used, you know, the 2019 it was used for about 205,000 gallons, 2023.
It was used for a hundred or excuse me, 411,000 and then 2024, the usage was reduced again
to approximately 165,000 gallons of septage. And then, um, large one that isn't in Rivali
county but is used for Rurali County waste is the Hanson properties so this
isn't located just west of Butler Creek and north of I 90 as you leave in
Missoula out for the why it's a fairly large site on average it's been used
for approximately 1.5 million gallons of septage has been land applied on
there annually this is the one that's a little bit difficult and we need to dive
into the numbers a little bit more from the actual pumpers that are using this
facility of the 1.47 that's a blend of a Valley County and Mizzoula County probably some Lake County. It's a little bit of everybody
Yeah, I
Hope we've got right now. We don't really have a chain of custody of where the source was for that
so
Then just kind of jumping through the other option the city, Mizzoula. So their resource recovery facility
They have a percentage receiving it's being used by a bit of a bumper actually when this photo was taken so
That's what they have for their facility.
The history of it was originally constructed in 1962, went through some major improvements
in 2010.
The headworks and septage receiving facilities, I think we're built in the 2012 range.
In 2023, the city went through some maintenance of their primary digester and through that process.
They had struggled with some balance issues on the digester gases, so they started to restrict
septage as a potential culprit and then like we talked about before they are
evaluating they're doing a facility plan update currently and with that they
are starting to evaluate whether septage is more harmful for their system whether
it's being invoiced and billed at appropriate rates for the maintenance and
ONM that it actually causes and acquires and through that process they've
restricted to about a million gallons per year right now, but further restrictions may be coming.
And then those are really the five options that are out there currently for active sites,
like I mentioned before, there was one in active site that's listed as permitted still in
Revali County, but it was only used for some disposal and it hasn't been used since I think 2020,
20 and that was the Hendricks and Property Locate in the Florence area.
So other public systems that are in Valley County, town of Stevensville,
original system was constructed in the late 1970s, so it was upgraded in 2006.
Service approximately or treats approximately 300,000 gallons or 0.3 million gallons per day.
It discharges to the bitter river,
some mechanical treatment plant.
Steamswell does not currently accept
septage waste from residents outside
of the town of Stevensville, and I don't know
that they have any septet tanks in the
town of Stevensville, but it's not being
used by anybody currently.
City of Hamilton, City's system was
originally constructed in 1984, went
through several modifications and upgrades
from the mid-90s through 2015-16, they're
currently going through a facility update
as well. They treat approximately 750,000 gallons per day. They also discharge to the
Bitterit River, it's a mechanical treatment facility. It utilizes solid management, which
is of interest for a septage treatment and management. It's through a dissolved air
DAF filtration units. They use also an aerobic digester in a composting facility after it
that you want in screw press. The city of Hamilton also does not currently accept
septage waste. Town of Derby is another municipal system. They're a
lagoon system. Construction 1964 with one cell, the two other cells were
constructed in 1980. They are also currently going through an improvement process.
They have several violations with Montana DEQ currently that they're trying to
address their discharge permit is noted there is a and then yeah the town does
not accept septage at this point time either. Victor sewer district originally
constructed in the 1970s. Victor prior to the 1970s was a non-seward community
everybody was on individual septic systems in that community through some
funding they built their original facility with a single cell and infiltration
and percolation cells, the discharge to groundwater,
air adhesion and a holding cell,
and a second treatment cell were added in the early 2000s.
The district is planning for current improvements
to enlarge the air adhesion area, relocate the infiltration
and percolation away from the bitter river
to maintain a discharge permit or a day
to get a discharge permit for that.
Then Corvalli's sewer district also was a public system,
constructed again in the 1970s.
It's a groundwater discharge facility, it includes multiple treatment cells and
engineered wetland and then discharge it through infiltration and
percolation cells. It's currently being improved to provide a headwork
screening replacement of the disinfection with air asian or excuse me with UV
disinfection and then the blower and air asian systems are being replaced along
with the main liftation as it being rebuilt. And those are really the sources of
septage treatments and also the municipal systems that accept it, and then the don't that are
invented with in Ravalli County. Two quick points. One is further back when we started talking
about the improvements in Hamilton. Has the EPA either loosened or tightened the numbers
of their requirements on the affluent or the discharge that goes into the river as far as
What's allowable to dump into the river and then would you please explain how wetlands are used in the filtration in I believe I'll be Corvallis, OK.
Thank you.
So within Montana both surface water and groundwater discharges are state permits unless you're on tribal lands and other EPA permit.
So Hamilton, I can't remember their last permit renew cycle.
They do review nutrient limits every permit cycle.
Sometimes they stay out there, sometimes they rush it down,
with watershed impacts and TMDLs,
it will get to the next section.
I think everybody anticipates that discharge limits
to surface water will continue to be reduced,
moving forward through each permit cycle.
There are variance processes that are available for those communities as they work through planning for and implementing improvements, but there are things that aren't doneies on line here. I don't know if you want to speak to that at all kind of where you're at.
The new tree limits are reduced through the permitting process, so the current limits for Hamilton likely will be reduced with future permitting rules.
Looks like dying might be able to have some time.
Well, wrap up Hamilton and then we'll jump to Corvallis and Darby.
Our discharge permit was updated.
Our renewal application went in in 2016.
Our actual permit renewal was 2021.
And DQ maintained our same discharge limits as our previous permit.
Our treatment plant, you know, changed our process in the early 2000s.
To do phase nitrification, denitrification.
and so does a fairly good job of removing nitrogen and phosphorus.
So, you know, our current effluent is fairly well
about a tenth of our discharge permit requirements
for nitrogen and phosphorus.
But, you know, those are every permit cycle
are kind of up where they go
and we're, you know, about half capacity right now, too.
So
real quick Corvallis you mentioned they use engineered wetlands
That was installed in 2004. It provides some
Neutrification reduction or denyification and then it also is a polishing
Historically performance in cold leather periods and then maintenance
It performs that thing as it intended, but it also kind of has some challenges in cold leather and then increases maintenance
requirements for vegetation, and then there's sludge accumulation within the engineering
level.
Would you define what you called half the passion, which is that?
So every municipality has a part of their permit.
It's ex-galanced per day, and where Daniel was getting to with Hamilton is their current
influence and effluent gallons per day is approximately half of what their permitted
limit is.
So the permit limit handles for private average day and then maximum and then it's also for the town of Hamilton.
The city of Hamilton's growth within their planning period is what those permits are usually written for.
So if that's the case, I mean they have 50% capacity right now or just maybe a little more in Hamilton.
Let's just use it as an example of other places in the valley also.
So that means that high-density housing possibilities for the future are best attached to existing
facilities rather than torturing our outer landscapes with septic systems, yes?
Thank you.
Do you want to deal with that one?
Thank you.
Goodbye, Skip.
And then Darby,
I honestly don't know what time about the current project.
But I do know there was challenges, I think with their discharge, may have been a ground
war discharge, but it was under direct connection to the Bitter River, and they've struggled
with violations, their improvements are meant to, I think, improve aeration.
They're still staying with a lagoon treatment system.
It's not Darby, sorry, we jumped back to Darby.
Sorry, I don't know a ton about their system, other than, like I said, historically, they've
struggled with with effluent quality based on some sludge accumulation that was
their lack of aeration through their existing system but believe both of
those are being approved with their current product.
I think they're doing their sludge removal like the dredging here and they
did meet to to positive test results which they needed to get that violation but
I'm going to get into your experience because the people in the valley are very concerned about the cleanliness of the Viro River.
It's going to even become more of a problem later on as in mind possible.
Any other questions on existing means of treatment and disposal?
If we don't, I'm just going to jump.
I know we've got about 15 minutes left here on our slot of time so the next step that we're just going
What we're going into right now is evaluation of existing facilities and treatment methods that are available and we broke this down to really two different sites or two different options. So we looked at the evaluation of the land app sites from a health safety and security standpoint. Some things that are just out there to be aware of threats to the public control of access, sites need to be fenced, research public access, that fencing needs to be maintained, public needs to be kept off of it.
If public is allowed to me under on, there's exposure or risks for pathogens and diseases
and viruses.
Screening a solid waste, land applications requires a three-quarter of screening that
screening needs to be taken to a class to landfill.
Anytime you're touching contaminated waste, there's an essential risk for contaminants.
That's really on the pumpers themselves, and it shouldn't be handled in the landfill by
hand but if there is any contamination groundwater and surface water resources, shallow water resources
and runoff to state waters are threatened by over application, application on frozen ground
must be basically lime stabilized or alkali stabilized. There's vector attraction and pathogen
reduction requirements that need to be maintained if not. There is a threat to endangering the public
whether it's livestock, animals that may be consumed by humans or just humans
themselves. So, again, vectors or anything that comes in contact with septage,
whether they're insects, rodents that could then pass a virus to humans, and then
animal and grazing crop restrictions. So, the 30-day minimum for grazing crop
restrictions.
General. As the fire captain for 32 years, the fight came on this
seeing with my fire engine, I would create a hazmat sight right there. Nobody's
getting in or out of there. You got a beautiful clean truck putting this is why
we're here. This is why we're here. We got to fix this. This can't continue. Thank
you.
And then the other thing to look at is capacity and aging facilities. So any
application rate like we mentioned is really related to total pounds of nitrogen
put on per acre for uptake of each of your vegetation or crops, there's land, and set back requirements, like we talked about before, kind of list those again, those lead to restrictions on land, and then capacity or capital costs, the large landtracks to purchase, you know, really, ideal sites are greater than 100 acres by the time you apply all the setbacks, you need large landtracks to be efficient and effective.
I'm just looking at an example here range land is probably the lowest property production
source there so that's to get there basically you're using 25 pounds of nitrogen per year
is what EQ lists that equates to 96 hundred gallons per year per acre.
If you look at that of the forecasted there's currently a need for 300 acres to land to
everything in Rivali County in the future there need to be 440 acres and that
doesn't account for any crop rotation taking things out of cycle doing
something else so that that's simply every year per grass using 25 pounds of
nitrogen per year so and then the last section here is really just evaluation of
wastewater treatment facilities and the things we're looking out there health
and sanitation security again screening through head works the only facility that
has a septage-receiving facility is Mizzoula. None of the other facilities would have a safe means
of accepting, septage through a headwarp and separating any of those large screenings.
Control of access. Again, authorization to haulers is a restriction. There's safety security
restrictions that every wastewater treatment plant has to keep the public out. It's another person
coming in and out of that safe area or those restricted areas.
Also the potential upset of sceptage that isn't pre-treated is pretty detrimental to, or
could be detrimental to plant upsets that would lead to permit violations, which is water
quality violations is what those are.
It's not only surface water but also groundwater on that.
And then aging infrastructure, again, most of the facilities here that we talked about
are threatened by any upset to the organic plant capacity and they're designed for reasonable
growth of residential and commercial developments with the strength of waste, you're consuming
that capacity at a much larger rate per gallon than you would with any residential strength
of waste, additional requirements for treatment plant operation staff, there's additional
You know, solves management, managing the receiving station, and then there's also lab facilities additional lab time analytical time to monitor and manage high strength waste and then again access management site access is limited.
Most facilities are in fringe areas with residential areas, so you have to traverse city streets, a lot more turning movements and trucks that come in and out.
and then permit limitations. I think we've kind of alluded to this on several things, but
there are several documents out there and plans that have been put in place.
Existing discharge permits are written around nutrient limits. They're either the Montana
pollution discharge elimination system. Those are surface water discharges. So,
Steven'sville, Hamilton, they operate under those permits. Groundwater pollution control system
permits are what ground water discharging facilities like Corvallis operate under.
And there's always the threat that future permits will be tightened to reduce nutrients
in our waterways that threaten, you know, recreation for humans and aquatics.
So a couple of things that have been put in place there, the bitter root nutrition protection
plan, and then the bitter root, total maximum daily loads, TMDL management plan.
There are 7 water bodies including portions of the river that are listed for impaired based
on nutrient standards and can in next steps that we're going to go through here.
There are some updates to the data that's here.
Draft chapters will be provided to the city or excuse me of the county and then we can
disseminate those to interest parties.
This presentation really focuses on chapters one, two, and three of the PER, which is established
as the need for the project.
So the next step that we will go through is evaluation of alternatives.
So this is no action alternative.
What happens if status quo maintains, what are the impacts of that, what are the costs of
that, what are the threats that could happen.
And then we are going to look at several alternatives for regional treatment facilities.
And then we talked about before of kind of how this will be a little bit of an allocate situation where we might have some liquid stream management for pre-treatment screening, you know, and then discharge of residential strength waste for secondary treatment within existing municipalities that could partner solid waste management is another thing for biosolids, dewatering, composting facilities, you know, PFOS considerations.
So PFAS is one that obviously I should have mentioned up ahead for threats for both land
app and treatment facilities.
There are concerns with PFAS, which is an emerging contaminant, it binds to soils, it gets
uptaken by plants, it has been found to then carry on through even animal consumption, whether
there's dairy products or meat in the upper East Coast area.
There's some restrictions there, so we'll look at that.
And then look at solid waste management.
So two more public meetings that'll take place.
March 3rd and April 8th.
I don't think we've set times in those yet, Chris,
but there are placeholders on the calendars that we'll get.
Schedules out to anybody.
Like I said, important that if anybody that joined today,
please sign up on the sign-in sheet. We haven't talked at a high level but we can
generate kind of a newsletter-based update email that I can generate and
send out before our next public meetings with the agenda and with the next
public presentation so people can dive into that ahead of time. But if you have
any questions my contact information is here. Like I said, if you reach out to
myself, the next couple of meetings will be more involved with our treatment folks, which
will be Ben Watson and Rico Lashley, I'll probably lead most of that, and I'll kind
of be here guiding the meeting and facilitating, but yes, sir.
Thank you, Aaron.
I do have one general question that goes way, it starts way back before we even started
talking about land apps.
When you were describing the future probabilities of septic permits needed per year, and I believe
I believe I was hearing something like over 300 a year.
Now, to me, my mind goes like this and I see this more than most people because of my
involvement with that and I'm just thinking about the game of monopoly and the monopoly
a fully board effect of 350 new septic systems in this county per year.
The density is like, think about if you are flying in and see in the Bitterwood Valley
10 years from now, that's 3,500 new houses as an example or a possibility.
So, I'm just trying to visualize that 350 new septic a year and to try to wrap my brain
around that.
And so, what I'm coming to is this, is there some cliff notes that you can, from your,
like for instance, the information that you have that you want to send us and keep us
updated on this sheet here?
Is there data that we can maybe get into the newspaper that are cliff notes for the general
public to learn about, that would interest them and grab their attention, so they would
care enough about this to be proactive as the future comes so that they don't get side-swaped
by things happening?
And you and I have had little conversations about this, it's called being proactive instead
instead of reactive after dramatic decisions have been made, and it becomes life-changing
events for people, especially if it comes to subdivision things involving lots of septic
systems.
So I'm just trying to throw some general idea out there, could your information somehow
be extended to the general public, which I call cliff notes, for them to start to be aware
of the upcoming expansion and probabilities that will happen in Rosallee County.
Thank you.
I don't want to speak for the commissioners, but I think one of the primary reasons why they wanted this project to be communicated versus via a story map was to be able to provide that information to the greater public without having to read a 300 page report.
So that was the intent of even today's presentation is really that anybody should be able to kind of read it and pick out the day till there's no except there's more detail in the chapters.
I think the one thing that I think is important to realize is that the problem that this project is trying to grapple with is an existing.
We're trying to clarify that there isn't an existing issue with
septage treatment in Ravelli County currently and then looking at
historically what that projects to within a planning period to see if it
worsens gets better and obviously we're not a descending population so it's
likely going to get. It's going to end town where I think it's important to
disrealize is the project focusing on septage treatment. It's separate from land
use planning and sometimes there's a blurring of lines and using for
different things and that's really political direction but I think it's always
something to be mindful of utility projects and how they're politics. No, I never.
Yeah, it's a link right now that anybody anybody can link to. I think I put it
might have been as non-searchable so if you did a Google search for
Rivali County Septage P.E.R. I don't think it would find this yet but I could
change that to searchable to. So anybody can search and find it as well. And then just going through
the next meetings, I guess, what the hierarchy of our mindset was is that this link in this story map
will stay consistent throughout. We'll just peel off the headings from public hearing number one,
and we'll just add public hearing number two in the titles below. So the whole thing will be there,
the whole environment will just build this story of the project through.
It's the only way I found out about this meeting, for instance, because I checked the agenda
all the time.
Most people don't.
Yep.
And so, and then sometimes there or in the legal, the legal's in the paper is another place
to find.
So, not everybody's reading the legal.
No.
Chris, did you know?
I was just going to check on that.
I missed it at the beginning, this public hearing force, that this treatment and composting preliminary
engineering report was posted in the newspaper of record Wednesday, January 8th of 25, and
on Wednesday, January 15th, 25th.
Thank you.
And with that, is there any other public comment?
Roger DeHon again.
I just want to throw my 10 cents in
because I've been tracking this issue for decades here.
This county knowing that this day was coming. And it's a tricky business. It's a really tricky business, both from a political aspect and from an engineering aspect. Because, and we have this whole private property thing, and we have people with successful businesses that are currently disposing on the land. And it's, I think, going to be really, really hard to stop that with an ordinance.
You know, the state sanctions it, if it's done correctly, it's been going on for decades.
There have been incidents of, you know, spillages and that kind of stuff.
I don't think there's ever been cases of people getting sick from it.
You know, that'd be really hard to verify, but so, you know, there's a lot of balls that
were juggling here that we're trying to keep going.
And so my vision for what it's worth, the ideal situation would be to design a system that's highly flexible.
I think that as time goes on, the land application is just going to naturally kind of slow down and decrease because of its inconvenience and the problem of starting new ones.
It would be really great if we could design some sort of a system that the cost per gallon
wasn't hugely different.
I mean, you know, that's something that's hard to judge, but so if we could kind of, you
know, maybe not be building a Cadillac here, but more like a Chevy or something that, you
know, might be affordable and entice people to use it because it's going to be available
all year round and it's going to be easy to get to and then also the the
flexibility of the the amount it's you know clearly they were guessing at
the population and all that kind of stuff and so maybe there's a way that we
could design it so that there's like increments that we can start out relatively
small but it's going to be easy to add to it as time goes on as it becomes more
popular. I don't envy these guys at all because there's a lot, you know, to design a perfect
system that really works, starting in a county that's never had a history of it. It's a challenge,
and my hat's off to you guys, and I think that if there's anything that we can do as a county to
help them and give them direction we should, because right now it's just sort of like the scattered
gun thing like, you know, yeah, there's these hundred different variables that we got to take into
consideration. And that's hard. So thank you for what you're doing. And yeah, we'll try to keep
it going in the right direction. Thank you, Roger.
Skip Chisholm. So what Roger's talking about is
in the word flexible is an SUV that's multiple use instead of a sports car or a limousine.
and so that's your that's your billy wick. But meanwhile if there's going to ever be anything attached to this that's going to require whether there has to be a mill levy attached to it or anything that would be a financial burden on the county as early as possible.
It's things like it'd be nice for more many people as possible to know it so that they could
They could absorb and decide in their mind. Yes, I live in this amazing place and and I need to
be part of it and so that they could get used to that as a possible future thing because a lot of people just be on
Well, no, I'm against it and anymore. I'm not spending any more money. Meanwhile, it may be advantageous for them to do so for the future of their families
and what I call the statistical privilege of living in Ravalli County.
Thanks.
Thank you, Skip.
Is there anyone else that needs to, would like to comment?
And with that, we will close the public hearing.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you.
I will.
Thank you very much.
Hello.
Oh, wait a minute.
Sorry.
This is Jim O'Lexy with TLC Patriot.
and I was just talking with one to ask Aaron.
You guys, I was there at that first meeting
when this came together, talking about the proposal
I gave up for Alice Bell in Flathead Valley,
I had county, I guess.
Is there an open window, or when is that?
I see the public caring for developing, evaluating alternatives.
Is there a time window when we can submit for those alternatives?
So Jim, you're on our list.
We just haven't got to writing that narrative yet.
So it'll be an open evaluation.
This planning process isn't going to go through a solicitation process for specific equipment
or vendors.
It's going to list a treatment process that's viable and how it could be implemented in different
locations.
and so it wouldn't be sole source to anybody
or select specific manufacturers vendors at this time.
Yeah, so I'm speaking on behalf of our wastewater plant
or NEPO that we're actually going to be building
this next year in buildings.
You know, I just like to talk with you more about it.
What that means.
And the other technology that we have to utilize it.
So I just want to make sure I didn't miss a window first submission of technology
or alternatives.
No.
Thank you, James.
Yep.
Thank you.
Thank you all for coming.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, Eric.
Thank you.
I want to pause until 1.30 circle.
Pause until 1.30, yes.
OK, OK, we reconvene for a discussion regarding
a bit of humane association and their proposal to us.
So these came from August and then you met in December
and said, continue and schedule when the county attorney
ensure it could be here.
Yes.
That's what I got.
I'm kind of I'm at a place where we kind of need to have a relationship with these guys
for a place to put confiscated animals and whatnot.
I think part of their proposal was overreaching a little bit when it came to medical patients
and things like that so I think I think we it's a discussion that we need to have and an item number
one I mean it raised a flag to me right off the bat where it's we're
basically responsible
they're they're taking animals in whether it's law enforcement or revolving county residents and
not distinguishing that will be will be responsible for those animals that we bring in that yeah we're
funding, right? That would basically be anybody who drops off an animal. Anything.
Yeah, we don't
want to go there. Right. So that first paragraph, I'm sorry, paragraph number one, ended at the
work forcement.
Is there any other situations where we have an animal that's brought in by somebody
other than the law enforcement through vicious dog or otherwise through any of that stuff? I don't know.
I
don't doubt there's other animals dropped out, but I don't know that. I mean, that's what
we get at all all the time.
I mean, I just didn't know.
It's just a straight dog down the cottage.
And I don't think we want to, I was just wondering through any sort of law enforcement, county attorney issues.
We don't have anybody else bring animals to the from the county's perspective anybody but law enforcement
Yes, in
the back of this
I didn't like number two. I mean, what's this we tried the dog licensing and it was an
object failure. Now we're saying. Well, that's not what we said to him when we were in the meeting.
Yeah, there's a recall the meeting they proposed a licensing thing that they would manage and they would
to use that as a revenue source.
A voluntary licensing program.
Right, and who's going to do the licensing here at the county?
There is no county licensing.
They read number two, so we would be selling dog licensing.
No, sorry, I don't mean to get it.
This would not require a sell dog licensing system.
So a system in county would pay more registration
There's complaints in selling doggo because the ordinance number 46 has no doubt
license.
They did.
I was reading one of their drives.
Yeah, it's a contract.
So you're agreeing that you'll assist in a program that doesn't have to
be for
conversation.
If you want to sell them to the shelter, I'm looking great with that.
That's what the proposal was.
As I recall, that was the proposal was that they would sell them at the shelter.
You got to give him a minute and it comes eventually but he do got to let it sink in.
Do you know any of my want to get ready to do it sometimes flying dog objects go that
way?
I'll give him some crayons don't get into it.
I guess at this point, we can always, if or when we get to the registration, we can
always do either a separate, and maybe it, I don't know, but that's the only thing
we did is they said, it seemed like initially they were pushing for a registration.
We said we're not going to do a mandatory, and they said, well, we would be willing to
assist or bait, not even assist, it sounded like to me they were offering to run the
the voluntary registration program.
And we put the term voluntary and after with B.R.
B.J. will assist the county with voluntary
normal registration for points.
I still think it doesn't allow us to go on.
As I know, are they as systemists?
Like if not, how do you do it?
I'm okay to get it out.
I
think that's my share.
If there was a program, it would be about how to run it over there and find that.
What sort of program did you modify the street?
Would
they need your authority to implement this voluntary program?
I mean, you guys?
Yes.
Why would they need our voluntary well depends on what you call it if you're going
to call it a Ravalli County Animal Registration. I would say they probably do need our
participate if they want to call it a better humane association I guess depends on how
and how it's pushed. They could help pet owners with the dog tags, vaccination records on the dog, and charge for that fee, and there's a lot of different ways it could go.
Okay.
Without it even necessarily being a license.
Yeah.
I agree.
Thank you.
What we've found was that contribution ended up being $350 a day based on the number of days
We're spending there. That's why we went to the flat day rate.
Yeah, and we had to change it from a contribution to a contract because of the tax funding of non-profit organizations.
So we have to do it under a contract scenario.
Right. And I think it went from like 20 to 40. I'm not sure if it could do increase in what they want.
Okay, and it could be a flat fee or it could be a data fee, it's all on contract, I'm just suggesting a flat fee would be an annual fee or a semi-annual fee, however.
X dollars for one year.
Okay.
And then every dog in the sheriff's office takes their authority pay before.
And we have the number there as far as having the food taken and the food taken.
They had some stats, but and I'm not sure with, okay, stray animals brought in impounded
animal, bro, I don't know what that means.
it's brought in by law enforcement 35 in 2024 that
was as as of July of 2024 so
you could see we ran these numbers back in the day it was close to when I first
got on when we were making a $40,000 contribution and we looked at and said for
26 animals brought in and it was something like 87 nights or dog days there
and why
did you consider that we could simplify a barrier at three?
Yes.
Would that require them to submit a invoice so we have a paper trail?
I would think so.
Okay. And is that going to be a flat rate or per day per dog or?
I
guess I would like to see us maybe add a couple bucks onto the day rate and get rid of
damage to the facility caused by animals in there.
and just offer up, I mean the $1.50 per vaccine,
I can't imagine they're doing a lot of vaccinations for them,
but it seems like if we could just get to a straight $35 a day,
$1.50 a vaccine, we can track that, that's a metric we can see,
and make that the fee schedule and not have anything else in there.
So, yeah, I think that's a fair way to,
so there might be an owner of this.
I was just wondering how many vaccinations they get per animal is it just all wise because a dollar 50 is not that seems
relatively inexpensive to me to administer a vaccine for a dollar 50
unless they're doing
27 vaccines, I don't I don't know if it yeah, I just don't know if a vaccine per animal is you typically one or if they're giving them like three
when they come in or
But either way that seems relatively inexpensive at about 50, but where you see where it can get concerning is any necessary veterinary care or damage to the facility that we're responsible for.
What is the they're talking about animals brought in by law enforcement and seized animals
that's through some sort of court like animal cruelty or their your order and somebody
They need to use their animal pursuant to coordinates 46, they have identified.
Yes, it is almost always going to be an animal that's been a vicious dog involved in a bite
on that large.
They can't be found.
Those sort of things when they're brought in.
And we have in here the responsibility of the party to reimburse us, meaning the county.
So really it's it should just be everywhere. I think we just change it to be your going to county if
you're good with that.
I don't really think there's any differences between
So that would be just us knowing how much I think is what you mean, right?
That would be just the prosecutor knowing how much that number is.
So we didn't have to come, the bills don't have to come to our office to do that.
We do that in any case with restitution.
And
those animals would still be brought in by law enforcement if they came in.
So you can almost get rid of everything besides just that top then or not even distinguish
or differentiate between right and I think that's totally agree.
Yeah, but we just want to make sure we don't have law enforcement where it's all it's it's it's
for Valley County Sheriff's Office. Yes. Yeah.
I guess Sheriff do you see any
difference between where they're saying others animals brought in for
impounding and there's animals brought in their seas? They're they're all house the
saying thank you so I think we can why are they it's kind of straight so they they talk about
animals brought in by law enforcement at this $30 a day then down below and they're talking about
building the county attorney's office they're saying statements for costs incurred for services
is food, shelter, you see that there it almost seems like there or
kind of getting rid
of that and basically what would you be okay with and what I would advocate for is just
a straight dollar a day for any dog brought in by sheriff's office whether it's county
attorney related or otherwise yeah so then number
six then is what you're talking about
where they say yeah all the costs including veterinary food etc. Yeah I
just
thought it'd be easier if they sent you through you know across directly the
chargers so it was easier not to get lost between sending over here go to these
claims process and then ship out over there we can all we would want to know is
from Janet for example what's the number what I think we should know from
them is have some sort of tracking though on here's dog number one this many days dog number two
instead of we had 47 dog days this month I think it should be tracked by perdog that would make
it easy for you to go back and sending dog number 22 and the number of days that they were in shelter four.
So they used to do it as they had just a flip board of basic intake forms that had been
dropped a dog off and that, and that, and that, and we begin to build that form out.
They should read, I think they should read that system and supply that with the invoice.
And that way, if you start getting rushed from Steve's book, please, or hand with the police department.
Right.
I think that was initially what happened is at one point then early on we started getting
built for dog days and we're like, well, what is this dog?
I don't know, we just had 87 dog days in here.
So I think that's it.
That is important.
So we just put in itemized, yeah, I got, I'm in here about itemizing that by, by animal
and made a note of that.
So for whatever reason they separated in their proposal here, those dogs that are
impounded and
those dogs that are the subject of criminal investigation which I'm inferring
to mean post dog bite and on the post dog bite ones they've added things like food and
shelter and damage by aggressive animals that's because we want to shoot everything out.
So do we want that left separate or is it just we're going to propose into pay the $35 a day.
I think it needs to be a flat fee.
For all of it, don't distinguish, don't break it down.
number
seven I can rework into the our responsibility to pay but not
15 days
that's not realistic in the claims process 30 30 days
So that's a cost of business and in addition to the flat fee, you're going to pay me for every day or dollar or bail or whatever.
Yeah, whatever.
Yeah.
Um, smart.
I had it already.
I bailed the table and that stuff was great.
Yeah.
That's the idea.
Which is why I proposed and I just threw 35 out maybe it's 32 or 30.
But just add a little bit on that day rate.
to compensate for these other things, and that way it's just really simple, there is no,
then there's no discretion as to or subjectivity like well yeah the dog bit the
wire and bent it but you really need to replace the whole panel for the damage.
$30 before the employee that was discolored would have been good to have them here to understand
a few of these things.
The number 8, I think I know what the concern is with a large scale because we've done
I'm not sure why the upon surrender is of the animals in their soul discretion they can do whatever. I'm not sure why that's in there because they want it only in the large cases or that it
I was going to say is that even legal to sign that over and that seems kind of strange
that we could just say they're now your animals.
At some point the people are going to lose their right to the animal back.
That's not right away. I think the only, that would be up to the court, right? Generally a court thing, and we had some, I'm thinking at large, we had, I'm
going to determine who, you know,
they can only, I guess that's two, because we've done this before, we've, um, 67 casts, wouldn't that just be 30 times 67? Yeah. Yeah, and that's what I'm wondering, do we want to say what?
well, it's, there's extra funding, we can make this green really simple.
Every animal we bring is $35 a day, we'll pay it every quarter.
The only reason that I wonder if the large scale was there because they sit, they talk
about large scale, our animal in an end with, including youth in Asia, is that a space
issue that are just the animals are not bad at shape, I don't know why they, and that's
That's why I wasn't sure if they met this to everybody it's empowered as soon as they're
surrendered they can do what they want with them or that is a court issue.
I didn't like, well, we already think we'll require just over the funding, I reckon they
would be a lot better word, more appropriate, they'd have to demonstrate it was plighting
lights in the game.
Take require out and put request in.
Yeah, there's a thought they could request it and like the horse thing we might say, oh yeah
We need to pay some rent out of the fair.
So we'll request.
We will.
Yeah.
And we'll charge them rent for the fairgrounds.
We need them.
That's a great idea.
It's a great idea.
To be honest, that's fair.
Yeah.
If we're bringing 25 out of horses.
Well, yeah.
Today.
It's going to cost a lot more $30 a day.
And they're not.
And they don't have the facility to take care of it.
So.
Bill.
Is it your intention to rewrite this and track changes?
We'll get there. Yeah, no, I'm just saying and then we can invite them so they can see their version of our version. We'll send it to them. Yeah
At some point we'll schedule a meeting and they come and we'll right. Okay, because Greg's track track and my changes.
Yeah
It's
a puppy male type case.
We still, I think, have to defer to a court before we're given permission to euthanize
and such.
They would truly have to be like in a band and
who would make the determination that
you can return to the office to put it in a dollar to get over the annual band and forward.
I mean, I don't know if there's anything I'd be able to do to that.
Yeah, I don't think so.
like too far into the weeds for it is. Like on a large scale incident that they could request
additional emergency funding for the county and that's really all that probably needs to be done.
Yeah, we can simplify that down. I mean that's probably the area we're using. So an animal gets
hauled in and it doesn't claim to be the 15 days that we did whatever then it's considered. I don't
know what we need to get hauled with that. And it seemed like when we had the agreement with Noah's
out there for a while. I think we put that in there that we would pay up to
X amount of days so that way we didn't get this like you know 60-day bill for
a dog that's been sitting there and I don't know what the
legalities are on that but if the difference is 10 days.
So what happened like
let's see you pick a dog up there's three hundred bucks. If you pick a dog up and we
take it down there and owners like this dog's been in pain I really don't want it how long before it
is there some sort of authority that says the dogs abandon that the pound that humane association
can adopt so you've nice whatever pose
something to you okay thank
you thanks Dylan yeah I think
I think Noah's art, like, have you seen that?
I mean, that might be something to just be aware of
where we came, because we, I think it's about 14 days on that.
We'll see what, where that line of authority lies
that, or it can't be found, or they're abandoned, or whatever.
Like you say, it just can't go on forever.
Then it would revert, like they're suggesting to do as you wish,
adopt, house, utilize, whatever's appropriate for that animal.
Yeah, we'll re-write this as a proposal back to him.
Here's a shoulder draft that's tight it'll be tighter
Is everybody satisfied with that and
with that is there any public comment on items not otherwise on our agenda?
We are adjourned
Thank you guys for coming over today